You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!

Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.

If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.

Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.

Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

Sabayon Linux Review
I noticed that there isn't yet a forum for Sabayon Linux which is based on Gentoo.

For a while I was running SuSE 10.2 on my laptop while dual booting it with Vista. As stated in SuSE's HCL, everything works except for the sound. I have a Lenovo 3000 N100 with 2 gigs of RAM, SATA hard drive and a Intel Centrino Duo processor.

I was not happy not having sound. I tried most live CDs and DVDs and found that most will not get sound or even the wireless part to work. The live Sabayon CD also has no sound, only the DVD does.

Sabayon was different. I downloaded and burned the latest live DVD that they had with multimedia support. Since this is an Italian based distro, mulitmedia support is not a problem.

I removed all of my data from the SuSE partitions and did a fresh install of Sabayon on top of them using Reiser file system. I've tried other types of file systems like Ext3 and so on with this laptop. The results were a total disaster regardless of the distro used.

For a few days, it actually worked with a few glitches. I couldn't create users, only rename the Sabayonuser account. Then, the desktop would flash and go black for no reason, sometimes rearranging the icons. The cube effect and graphics acceleration are awesome, way better looking then Vista... when they work.

The glitches multiplied and only got worse. I couldn't close windows in Konquerer even when running as root. The windows were also offset so that you couldn't even access the GUI properly.

Now to add insult to injury, even the live DVD no longer boots properly and there is no sound for anyone except for root. Of course, running as root is way to dangerous.

Having said that, this is the only version of Linux that even came close to running correctly on this laptop.

Mepis (which is awesome on my desktop) can't even really be used because the mouse prompt flies all over the place wildly activating functions at random. That is just the live CD.

Mandriva Metisse also lacks sound with the live CD. When installed, it won't even boot because the alsa sound driver doesn't work.

Regular mandriva is a little more solid, but has no sound or networking. Mandrake... fuggettabuddit.

Xandros sold itself as being perfectly compatible with this model, but wouldn't even install. To be fair, burning another disc might help. There is nothing wrong with the first, however, that I can see.

Although Sabayon is bleeding edge and probably needs a few more releases to become solid, it is the only type of Linux to correctly recognize and use the hardware on my laptop.... for 4 days.

This Lenovo is the most Linux-unfriendly computer that I have ever seen and possibly in world history.

There has to be a baseline with Linux and Unix varients. They should be noticable more reliable then Vista or XP, equally reliable as MACS are and more secure then either. If not, what is the point? Linux's whole claim to fame is being more reliable then Windows.

Based on what I've seen, Sabayon isn't there yet at least with this laptop. Still, it is absolutely gorgeous to behold when it works.

wonderful graphics, recognized and accommodated my ACER Aspire for all of the MM iuse. The sound is small but works.

Cons:

The OS hangs up for no obvious reason. Sometime when it is running, sometimes after powering down in response to no use and sometimes at boot up. These are hard hangups and can't be shutdown by all the usual tricks. The only thing that escapes out of the

I would recommend this product without hesitation. Coming from a desktop running Susse, I find the "Emerge" system for upgrading a bit awkward. Having said that, logging into the ftp site got me instant help and tips.

<p></p>Like I said before, Sabayon isn't quite there yet.&nbsp; Consider it like Alpha or Beta software, for example like an unstable release of Debian.&nbsp; Still, it has a lot of potential and makes a great live CD so long as you don't actually install it.&nbsp; Sabayon is region free when playing a DVD.&nbsp; However, your hardware must also be region free or the picture will have massive distortions.&nbsp; It plays DVD movies out of the box and has most of the multimedia codecs preinstalled.<br><br>Since using Sabayon, I tried Fedora 7 on my laptop which is a 3000 N100.&nbsp; It worked very well.&nbsp; The internal sound didn't work, but an external USB sound card did.&nbsp; This card was part of an Altec Lansing headphone and microphone set.&nbsp; After that, I installed Fedora 8, which works perfectly aside from the occassional system lockup.<br><br>If you have one of these laptops (3000 N100), give Fedora 8 a try.&nbsp; Install it from the live CD.&nbsp; It even found a wireless HP photo printer by itself.<br>